Travel gear reviews, gadgets for the road, and travel clothes that pull their weight.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Tati Yes Watch Keeps You in Sync as You Travel

I have only been home three days in the past month, so I have been trying out the abilities of this TATI version of the Yes Watch as I moved through different latitudes and time zones.

The Yes Watch company marries the wonders of computer chips with the solar and moon cycles we've seen above us since the dawn of man. The new with the old, the unseen with the obvious. Their whole line of watches visually displays the daylight time and the moon cycle time, wherever you happen to be. You click through an alphabetical menu (using two of the four buttons) and pick your home city and away city out of 500+ cities around the world. Then you see when the sun will rise and when it will set, plus the time you will see the moon and what it will look like.

More on that later, but first a bit on this specific model, the "tati." I have the wrists of a musician rather than the wrists of a construction manager or a fat executive, so those huge Swiss chronographs you see splashed all over GQ and Best Life aren't going to look very good on me most of the time. This watch is mounted on a leather strap, so you can tighten it to fit and it doesn't look like you're trying to say, "Hey everybody, look at my watch!" It's attractive in a more subtle way but still has some heft and the feel of fine workmanship. (It even comes in a pretty velvet box.) It's small enough to be unisex, with five strap color choices that switch out easily.

I found myself looking at the sunrise and sunset displays on this watch frequently as I moved through Portland, Seattle, British Columbia, Alberta, and then the east coast of the U.S. Not only was the novelty of it interesting (as in sunset at close to 10 p.m. and sunrise before 5 a.m. in parts of Canada), but it helped me as a parent figure out when I could hope to get my kid in bed and whether we needed to draw the hotel blackout curtains. The moonscape part was interesting too, seeing the cycles and noticing when the moon would be visible during daylight hours.

As with any watch with multiple functions, you need to keep the instruction manual handy. After a while I got the hang of changing cities easily as I moved around the hemisphere and after a while I could light up the display in the dark without hitting the wrong button. I had to look up how to set the alarm each time though. It's not all that loud--better as a backup if you're a heavy sleeper--but there is a snooze function. If you're so inclined, you can also take advantage of any of these functions: 24-hour stopwatch with laptime, a 99 minute timer with alarm, a past and future date time calculator and a 999 day countdown/up.

The tati watch from Yes lists for $395-$445 is programmed through 2099, so unless you were born yesterday it should last a lifetime.